In the field of cabinetry and mill work, the typical hinged connection includes a hinge cup mounted to a furniture carcass and pivotally connected to a hinge arm mounted to a door. A metal coil spring biases the metal hinge cup toward the metal hinge arm often in a manner that may damage cabinetry doors and cause unwanted slamming noise. Damped, controlled closure provided by removable, soft close devices prevents damage to cabinetry doors and helps avoid unwanted noise. However, during installation of soft close devices it is often preferable to have the ability to turn off the soft close functionality in order to optimize how many soft close devices are active on each cabinet door.
Prior art soft close devices have attempted to provide various ways to deactivate hinge dampers, but have done so unsatisfactorily. The prior art suffers from disadvantages such as complicated construction and high manufacturing cost.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 9,057,214 to Salice discloses a hinge with a deactivatable decelerating device. The device requires a housing slidably engaged with a double barreled slider. A biasing member within the slider has a side projection and a blocking member attached to the housing has a projecting part. The projecting part must extend through a hole in the housing to engage the side projection to deactivate the damping functionality.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,561,262 to Liang, et al. discloses a damping device for a hinge assembly. The device comprises a housing fitted to a hinge cup, a damper slidably engaged with the housing, and an adjustment member movably connected to the housing. The adjustment member includes upper and lower tabs for engagement with the housing, tips and protrusions for engagement with the housing and the damper, a hook for engagement with a spring to bias the adjustment member relative to the housing, and an additional protruded portion for contact with a piston rod extending from the damper.
Hence, there is a need for a soft close device for a compact hinge that is uncomplicated, requires minimal separate parts, and is easy and inexpensive to manufacture.